Sigma and Alteryx, How to Compare Apples and Oranges

Technology comparisons for software happen for a variety of reasons.  Software rationalization initiatives, technology gaps, a changing business environment, or competitive pressures that require scouring the landscape to find a technology solution with an entirely new set of capabilities.  Regardless of the purpose of the exercise, too often a software search turns into a checklist of requirements and an “unbiased” selection once enough boxes are checked.  The team misses the key question:  What problem is the business trying to solve and will this help to solve it?  

Read customer stories of business problems Sigma is solving here.

Sigma and Alteryx have a few overlapping features but are solving drastically different problems within the business world today.  Simply put, if Alteryx and Sigma are both considered for a tech bake off, someone is in the wrong kitchen.

There are several business needs that Alteryx fills:

• Desktop Data Prep
• Geospatial & Demographic analysis
• Simple AI/ML entry points for new analysts
  

From my personal experience across many dozens of customers, Alteryx’s primary use is to automate the process of bringing data sources together in preparation for analysis downstream.  Insights from data are rarely, if ever, discovered within the platform itself.  Typically, output from these automated workflows is to a business intelligence solution, database, or Excel workbook.  If a user needs to automate the merging and wrangling of data, Alteryx is an option.  

If that user wants to uncover insights from data to help drive the business forward, this is where Sigma takes over.  Sigma allows for an analyst to interrogate data and go where the story takes them over billions of rows of data in a spreadsheet-like interface that is familiar to them.  Sigma provides functions and slicing of data manipulation much like Alteryx does.  Unlike Alteryx, however, these capabilities allow analysts to dig deeper into areas of the data in order to uncover trends or anomalies that cannot be discovered using an automated process.  Providing high-level key metrics like revenue and margin on products and geographies will always be valuable in helping analysts keep their pulse on the business.  But the ability to dig deeper to uncover the "why" of those metrics is where Sigma shines.  
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Learn more about Sigma’s functionality here.

In today’s market, Alteryx plays a role in helping analysts to automate ETL processes within the business to feed a platform where analysis is done.  Increasingly,  the outputs of these automations are to cloud data warehouses in the modern data stack.  Sigma is leveraging these modern technologies to bring insights to businesses that were not possible before.  So we will end where we began.  What problem are you trying to solve?  Are you looking to move data or provide a platform to analyze data to get a competitive edge?  Apples and oranges for two different bake off recipes.

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